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Hillary Care 2008?  A Health Insurance Mandate.

Thirteen years have passed since Hillary Clinton first tried to change the health insurance landscape in the United States.  There's no doubt the landscape is in need of redesign... but is Hillary on a rocky road?  Is she taking us down the garden path?  Changing our existing health privatized health care system is a tough row to hoe.

Okay... now that I've dispensed with as many landscape cliches I could think of... let's get down and dirty and dig in to her proposal.  (Okay I had one more in me...)

Hillary's plan would cost the federal government around $110 billion per year.  The 47 million people without health care coverage now would be covered.  In fact, they wouldn't have a choice.  Her plan has an "individual mandate".  Her "American Health Choices Plan" would require that all Americans are covered much like everyone is required to have auto liability insurance. 

There are 4 primary points to Hillary's health insurance plan:

-- New coverage options will be offered for insured and uninsured individuals that is supposed to guarantee quality
   coverage;

-- Costs of plans are inclined to drop due to removal of hidden taxation, a focus on prevention, and boosting
    security by helping to ensure that loss of a job or a family illness will not lead to an individual losing coverage;

-- Responsibility will be shared among providers of insurance, individuals getting the coverage, government, and
    employers-- causing insurance and pharmaceutical companies to cease discrimination based on pre-existing
    conditions and over charging; and

-- Making affordable health care possible by providing tax relief and limiting premium payments to a percentage of
    income and making Medicaid stronger.

The main criticism of her plan is that it resembles government run programs in other countries-- what amounts to socialized medicine.  There may be something to that...  Michael Moore's new film, Sicko, touts the benefits of such plans.  Even claiming that the Cuban system is better than ours.  (John Stossel of 20/20 blew this out of the water when he took his own excursion to Cuba and showed that Moore was taken only to the facilities that served Cuban's elite.  Stossel also explained why infant mortality rates appeared so low in Cuba... babies that die soon after birth are counted as never having been born.)

But I digress... I would love a plan that works.  But if the plan includes raising taxes and placing control of healthcare in the hands of Washington-- I'm not sure I want to hear more about it.  HillaryCare 2.0 (as Giuliani is calling it), would expand Medicare programs as well as the health insurance plan currently offered to federal employees.  Despite the proposed expansion of Medicare and newly created impositions on businesses (Businesses will be required to offer coverage... tax code will undoubtedly become more complex) Hillary's staff insists there will be no additions to our existing behemoth of a bureaucracy.

I'll withhold judgment completely until I hear more... After all, you can't do something with nothing.  The battle for change has begun and it's a good fight... and by that I mean an honorable fight.  Senator Obama and Senator Edwards are coming up with plans of their own as well-- and surprise, surprise-- these vying-for-the-democrat-presidential-nomination-guys say their plan is better than HillaryCare 2.0. 

So let's stay tuned together...  There's a year left in this fight and we've yet to hear the Republicans truly enter the healthcare fray.  Hillary has set the pace of the game and has the momentum right now.  I'll keep you posted as the contenders put their solutions forward.